Quiara Alegria Hudes' book for the Tony-winning musical "In the Heights" was a sweet-natured celebration of family, friends and community.

That perspective, common to most of her work, is present in spades in "The Happiest Song Plays Last," a heartfelt but gooey effort at the Second Stage Theatre.

The play, directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, is notable for having no bad guys, which is one reason it also has very little drama.

"Happiest" is the third part of a trilogy in which Hudes has charted the bond between Elliot (Armando Riesco), a young man who served in Iraq and suffered post-traumatic stress, and his older cousin Yaz (Lauren Velez).

In the new play, Elliot – who is based on Hudes' cousin — is in Jordan, serving as both an adviser and an actor in a docudrama (an independent film that seems to have a limitless budget) about the Iraq war.

Meanwhile, Yaz, attractive and 40ish, is back home in North Philadelphia, living alone in a big house in a rundown, largely Puerto Rican neighborhood.

Building community

A Yale graduate and music professor, she's become the Lady Bountiful of the community, staying up all night to cook pots and pots of comfort food for the poor, ill and homeless, including a tetched street dweller named Lefty (Anthony Chisholm), who's welcome to drop in any time through her unlocked front door.

Yaz is being courted by Agustin (Tony Plana), an older musician who plays the guitar-like cuatro, and wants her to bear his child to continue his lineage. (The cuatro is invoked as a kind of mystical source of Puerto Rican pride and pleasure. A cuatro trio that plays island folk songs is the most engaging part of the evening.)

Back in Jordan, Elliot — who Skypes with Yaz — has struck up a friendship with a comical Iraqi (Dariush Kashani), who's working on the film, and also has begun a romance with its leading lady, an Arab-American actress (Annapurna Sriram).

Elliot persuades her to go on a fun adventure to Egypt, where the demonstrations in Tahrir Square are about to topple the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, the death of a friend who was neglected in a hospital emergency room leads Yaz to deliver an angry, and lengthy, speech calling for neighborhood action, including a rally. Only 11 people show up in response, however.

Is Hudes, you wonder, trying to contrast a citizens' movement in Egypt, where multitudes gathered to drive a despotic leader from power, and the measly response in America, where only a handful came together to protest disgraceful health care?